A Kansas City Public Television filmmaker and producer shared her career experiences with more than 50 students and teachers at the Ball State University Burkhardt Building Tuesday night.
Pamela Reichart, who graduated from the University of Missouri Kansas City with a bachelor's in mass communications, has written and produced six documentary films, two of which have won regional Emmy awards. Reichart said she was not always sure what she wanted to do in college until she got into mass communications.
"I discovered you could actually do stuff behind the camera and it was very rewarding," Reichart said. She also discovered she had a talent for history while working on a World War II documentary for KCPT.
"It was rewarding in my mind because I got to interview these 40 people, and that's who I was doing it for, these 40 people who aren't alive anymore."
Clips from seven of Reichart's films were shown during her speech, including a documentary about the history of beer-making in Kansas City and one titled "Kansas City to Kancurado," which focused on the beauty of the Kansas landscape. A more intense clip was shown from her documentary covering the struggles and hardships of new immigrants in Kansas City.
Reichart said this type of filmmaking demands a lot of maturity from the storyteller.
"It's a huge responsibility, especially when you are dealing with people's feelings or people's emotions," Reichart said. "Each documentary or story you tell, you become a small expert in that field."
Betsy Pike, a telecommunications graduate student, said at one time she wanted to be a documentary filmmaker as well.
"I thought the presentation was great," Pike said. "I liked seeing all of her documentaries and the growth throughout them."
Reichart is now working on a documentary for KCPT titled "Bad Blood" about the Kansas-Missouri border conflict that resulted from the civil war.
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